While the game is put together so that people will have an overpowering reason to mod it, there are still quite a lot of modders out there that will do it just because they can. Think of all of the "maybe in the expansion" material that is brought up that could be achieved with some proficient editing of existing systems. The modders will see that potential and will try to make it happen.

A stellar garden would be an interesting addition to a stellar zoo. I have seen what I believe procedural plant growth in a game before, I can't imagine it being as difficult to implement... since plants don't actually move much.

The problem with improvised creatures, is that you can't talk about them on the forums, otherwise they aren't improvised. I will disclose one small secret relating to mine, though, just because I am that nice: my creature will be awesome. Keep it hush-hush.

Sure it's effieient now, but it had to be a pain to arrange them all like that. I get the impression that that is the result of future ViS accidently, and temporarally discovering boredom, and deciding to do something huge and (almost) pointless so that they could check it off their list.

Certainly no game would be complete without the ability to take energy from its most abundant source: the past? Some claim that such practices are erroding the present, which is also being eroded by people taking our energy to power the future, but this is all speculation.

I'd like to be able to advance without dominating my neighbors...and without leaving them in the dust. In fact, I'd like to see my neighbors rise into space with me. I have never heard of multiple empires being run from the same place, but who's to say it is impossible?At any rate, being forced to conquer my neighbors, militarily or otherwise, would not be too great, I hope the player isn't the only one who can expand: a stunted neighbor is not the most exciting neighbor. Obviously we can't afford to have ALL of the civilizations expanding... it would an unnecessarily tax on the syste;, but to see a few empires, and to see the possibility of more than one of them being from the same planet or system, would be very refreshing.

Maybe by not building a fleet of your own, it is assumed that that saved money would have gone into upgrading your UFO and civilization. A player with a fleet will be able to tackle enemy fleets with their fleets, while a player without would take them on with a superior UFO and planetary defenses.

The trick is to keep your sanity safe for future use. There is no point in damaging it by attempting to keep it on your person though a whole year (+) of waiting for Spore. I put mine in a little box labeled "don't open until your Spore disc is [here]" and put it in my closet.

Grasshoppers (locusts) are probably the most notorious swarmers... and it would be a bit weird to classify it as "carnivorous" behavior. I think the main difference between herding and swarming is the scale and the consistence of occurrence. Bees/locusts/etc. tend to swarm only in specific situations while "herding" animals do it consistently. Maybe "packs" would be a better word for the "carnivorous" form of herding.

Here's my guess: herding/packs should be pretty much a given. It is extremely common in nature and would be a very awkward thing to leave out entirely.Swarming, while less common in nature, is extremely popular in science fiction, which is of course the subject that most of this game will be based on. The only reasons that it would not be implemented would probably be gameplay complexity (although we don't really know enough to know if it would fit in with the rest of the game or not), system/programming difficulties (as far as I am aware, this kind of thing is pretty difficult to accurately simulate), or just plain time restraints.